"God can still
heal if you pray to him to do so,"; said Pope John Paul II recently
in his Sunday angelus message, which turned into a call to solidarity
with the sick, the old and children. According to the Pope, "all of
them are in danger of being regarded as a burden".

In Italy, this
invitation from the Pope to pray for a miracle brings back into the
public arena the claimed miracle of the Madonna in Civitavecchia, a
village near Rome, where a small icon brought from Medjugorje weeps
tears of blood.

A theological
commission appointed by the Vatican has now accepted this as a miracle,
according to an unconfirmed report. The statue was first seen weeping
tears of blood, which was found to be human, in early 1995. The second
anniversary of this miracle was attended by about 10,000 pilgrims. The
local bishop surprised those present by blessing the occasion. He said
that at least two people had been miraculously cured of cancer, one
in Turin and the other in Toronto. In addition, political extremists,
previously dedicated to violence, had been converted to peace and Christianity.
Civitavecchia is now attracting thousands of pilgrims.(Source
: The Tablet, UK; El Pais, Spain; reported in Share International, April
1997 )